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Category / Inspiration Vault

Race Movies and the Black-Owned Studios that Thrived Next to Hollywood

There was another Hollywood that thrived once upon a time. From the 1910s to the 1950s, an independent Black American film industry was in full swing, making movies specifically for an all-Black audience, with its own African American directors, stars and studios. The movies they produced, the first alternative American “indie” cinema, are known as…

America’s Hidden “Mad Men” Age of Black Advertising

Style and smiles all-round, saturated to the max; sexy undertones complete with sexist overtones and carefree capitalism – those iconic mid-century advertisements weren’t just unique to the magazine pages of white America. In the 1950s and ’60s, the notorious advertisers of Madison Avenue, aka the real-life “Mad Men”, sought out African American dollars too. Unbeknownst…

The Familiar Hollywood Tale of How Screen Legend Veronica Lake Wound up Working in a Dive Bar

In 1962, a reporter with the New York Post got a tip that screen goddess of the 1940s, Veronica Lake, was working as a barmaid in the lobby of the Martha Washington Hotel, a low rent boarding house in Midtown Manhattan. Using the name Connie de Toth, she said she enjoyed her job because “I…

Jesus and Kitsch: The Rise of the American Megachurch

They called him Big Butter Jesus – Sweet Cream Jesus. Sometimes, Touchdown Jesus. The nicknames for the massive statue outside Monroe, Ohio’s Solid Rock Church may have varied between dairy and football allusions, but its purpose was unflinching: bring in the people. With his arms outstretched to the heavens, conveniently off Ohio’s Interstate 75, the…

Time Machine du Jour: A 1960s London Flower Taxi

It can’t be often that you come across a charming little business lost in the archives and think – wow, that’s a really innovative idea! Time travel with us back to a 1960s London when a young couple decided to sell flowers from the back of a taxi… This got me thinking about the classic…

The French Castles, Literally Fit for a Pigeon

They might easily be mistaken for playhouses fit for a princess, like Marie Antoinette’s little hamlet houses at Versailles, but these pint-sized castles dotted around France were in fact designed for a much smaller tenant– one with wings to be precise… You might vaguely recognise the mini-castle pictured above, which has been cleverly re-imagined by photoshop and…

Borrow a Private Lighthouse Island for the Price of a Bed & Breakfast

A stone’s throw from a medieval sea fortress in the heart of Morlaix Bay in Brittany, France, on a little rocky island with a 19th century lighthouse and a white and powder-blue cottage, your Robinson Crusoe moment is waiting. The keys to the lighthouse keeper’s old cottage –and absolute sovereignty over your own island for the…

The Real Ziggy Stardust who Lost his Career to Acid

In 1966, David Bowie had a chance encounter with Vince Taylor an early exponent of the British Rock and roll scene. Taylor had been a leather-clad, chain-wielding rocker from the 1950s, a combination of Elvis, Eddie Cochran, and Gene Vincent. What now stood before Bowie in London’s West End was a bedraggled, wide-eyed religious zealot…

The Resurrection of a Sleeping Art Nouveau Palace

Gatsby’s mansion has nothing on Chateau Laurens. Perched majestically on a river bend on the outskirts of Agde, a former Ancient Greek colony in the south of France, this exceptional place lost in time has spawned countless stories and speculation about what went on behind its mysterious walls. Some say that the lavish villa was…

13 Cheap, Last Minute and Actually Good DIY Gift Ideas

From D.I.Y. TO “I.O.U”, here is a round-up of the best and cheapest gift last-minute ideas out there. For just about anyone: A “Gift Bucket”… Stock it with personalised little surprises according to the person’s taste and personality. You can find the lanterns or buckets at most supermarkets/ gardening/ homeware stores for as little as…

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